Two gardens that connect mom and daughter

Steve Whysall, Vancouver Sun07.13.2012

De Man's daughter, Monique Wilberg (above) looked to her mother for assistance when the time came for her to create a garden and de Man was quick to produce a list of plant suggestions.Arlen Redekop
/ Vancouver Sun

Ellen de Man's daughter Monique has a cat which steals neighbours gloves from their homes. Monique puts the gloves on sticks in her front yard so the owners can claim them.Arlen Redekop
/ Vancouver Sun

Ellen de Man at home in her beautiful West Vancouver garden, which is composed mainly of hydrangeas.Arlen Redekop
/ Vancouver Sun

Ellen de Man at home in her beautiful West Vancouver garden, which is composed mainly of hydrangeas.Arlen Redekop
/ Vancouver Sun

De Man's daughter, Monique Wilberg (above) looked to her mother for assistance when the time came for her to create a garden and de Man was quick to produce a list of plant suggestions.Arlen Redekop
/ Vancouver Sun

De Man's daughter, Monique Wilberg (above) looked to her mother for assistance when the time came for her to create a garden and de Man was quick to produce a list of plant suggestions.Arlen Redekop
/ Vancouver Sun

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This is the story of two terrific gardens with one connecting theme – the love, trust and respect of a mother and daughter for each other.

Ellen de Man is the mom. She came from Holland in the 1960s and has built a beautiful formal garden, composed mainly of hydrangeas, around her home in West Vancouver.

Monique Wilberg is Ellen’s daughter and with her mom’s help, she has built an equally beautiful garden, but with a more edgy, contemporary style, in North Vancouver.

It is, however, the invisible, third element that links these two beautiful landscapes and makes them special – the loving relationship of mutual trust and cooperation between mother and daughter that permits a free and creative exchange of ideas and generous sharing of knowledge.

When Wilberg came to build a garden around the sleek lines of her new North Vancouver home, designed by California architect Bill Fisher, she immediately looked to her mom for help and advice.

De Man came up with a plant list and Wilberg gave it her seal of approval on the spot.

For instance, de Man suggested growing Paul’s Himalayan Musk, a vigorous rambling rose, into a tree, just as she had done in two places in her own garden, and Wilberg agreed.

De Man recommended confident use of clipped boxwood, as well as a closely planted row of laburnum trees under-scored with purple alliums as well as putting in large drifts of perennials. Wilberg loved the idea.

De Man pointed out the reliable characteristics of ornamental grasses, such as the golden Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’) and variegated Japanese sedge (Carex ‘Ice Dance’) and Wilberg used them in bold strokes around her garden.

And later this year, mother and daughter will fly to London to buy a unique sculptural silver water feature made by international designer David Harber.

De Man first saw it at the Chelsea Flower Show in May and thought it would look perfect in the small courtyard at the front of Wilberg’s home.

A quick look at the piece on Harber’s website and Wilberg loved it, too. Now they will travel together to pick it up which will be an adventure itself.

Perhaps it sounds as if Wilberg does whatever her mom tells her. But it’s not like that. It is not mindless obedience, but a case of consideration and respect, trust and admiration that ultimately translates into creativity and success.

It’s a beautiful thing to see in action, especially when the outcome of all this positive interaction is the development and evolution of a beautiful garden that somehow corresponds perfectly to the life and energy of the relationship that produced it.

What does Wilberg have to say about her mom’s influence?

“The great thing about my Mom is that she gives me a slew of options and then lets me decide. She is extremely talented from a design point of view and that is something I can respect.

“She has had a profound influence on the structure of my garden in particular. She introduced me to top Dutch landscapers, such as Piet Oudolf, and she has always tilted me in the direction of using large gestures of perennials to give the garden a strong theme and solid anchor.”

As for de Man, she describes her daughter’s garden as “sensational” and “stunning”, and adds that she was once standing along, looking at it one day when the sun came out and “I got goosebumps, it was so beautiful.”

She feels honoured to have been able to play a role in her daughter’s garden decision-making, but she is equally aware that it has been a privilege, one that came from having earned her respect and trust over many years.

There is one feature in Wilberg’s garden that neither she nor her mom planned.

To the left of the driveway, there are a dozen sticks with garden gloves on top. At first glance, it would be easy to think this for a quirky art installation, but no, it is actually the neighbourhood garden glove recovery station.

Wilberg’s cat, Bert, an adventurous Siamese, goes out every night and steals garden gloves from neighbour’s yards and porches.

It has become such a regular occurrence that Wilberg decided it was easier to place the gloves on the bamboo canes where neighbours can come at their convenience and reclaim them.

Nevertheless, the gloves-on-sticks are in a way striking pertinent art — a statement of loss and recovery on an environmental theme.

De Man has no glove-stealing cats in her garden, but she does have lots of hydrangeas – at least 36 different kinds, mostly whites and blues with the odd pink cultivar in a container.

As a girl growing up in The Hague in Holland, she remembers her mother telling her grandmother that she (grandma) needed to get rid of her hydrangeas. “They were considered funeral flowers at the time, but my grandmother refused to part with them. I think her influence has stayed with me.”

From years of gardening, de Man has learned the value of repetitive planting as a way of creating natural rhythms of colour and texture. She has also succeeded at getting the right plant in the right place more often than not.

In fact, her garden is almost a textbook example of this basic garden principle with shrubs such as aucuba and sarcococca used along with brunnera, hostas and Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola) in the shade while spirea, rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus ‘Red Heart’) viburnum and lilacs occupy sunnier spots.

She also (partly because of her Dutch background) loves neatly clipped hedges and shapely-pruned evergreens.

Stepping through her black wooden arbour-gate entrance into the front garden, two elegant circles of deftly trimmed boxwood immediately spring into view with lavender packed in the centres. These circles are separated by a charming slate path that curl around and leads to the front door.

In the back yard, this idea of a circle of low-clipped boxwood is repeated in a square of lawn. This circle is larger than the ones at the front and stuffed with billowy blue nepeta.

Elsewhere, there are crisply clipped rows of skimmia and hedges of bridal wreath spirea, as well as more boxwood (variegated and plain green) grown in containers and snipped into perfectly round balls or graceful cone-shapes.

Hydrangeas provide the key connecting agent through the garden. They flower at different times because of slight differences in their locations and they offering long-lasting summer colour as well as a pleasing foliage contrast to the dark, denser evergreens.

Bright flashes of blue and white are added by lush stands of monkshood and campanula while a Robinia pseudoacacia ‘Frisia’ pumps a bright splash of yellow foliage to draw the eye to the bottom of the garden where two Viburnum mariesii shrubs are the stars of the show in spring producing spectacular layers of white flowers.

In a side border, coral bark maples complement the pink flowers of spirea in sunny spots while a lanky Japanese snowbell tree is a surprise find in a shady Italian “bosco-like” woodland patch.

Now in her 70s, de Man gets help four hours a week from Sally McDermott and from her husband, Jan, who is responsible for the terracing of a slope on east side of the garden with boulders found on the site.

At Wilberg’s garden, a short drive away in North Vancouver, the plant selection is identical in parts with blocks of Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’ and Stachys byzantina being used with curves of lavender and carpeting persicaria.

In a grouping of white containers, Carex ‘Ice Dance’ was another of her mom’s recommendations, a grass de Man has combined impressively with variegated Brunnera ‘Jack Frost’ in her own garden.

In Wilberg’s front yard, the straight lines of the attractive stone walls, designed by Tyler Mosher, of Whistler, have been softened by circles of clipped box, an inspired design by Ruth Olde, of Blasig Landscape Design, who incorporated all of de Man’s plant suggestions into her plan.

An eye-catching grid-patterned installation of glass and stainless steel provides artistic relief being set against the row of laburnums. These trees are all under-planted with the large globes of Allium giganteum.

In the back yard, beyond the infinity swimming pool, the garden slips down into a series of terraces, all lavishly planted with red ‘Vigorosa’ roses, kniphofia, lavender, phlomis and spirea.

There is also a golden robinia here, just as there is in de Man’s backyard.

Where there was once a jungle of blackberry, there is now a colourful six-layered terraced garden, with an arching satellite-like sculptural work by Chris Cooney at the top.

Next to the shimmering pool, a large black pot has been filled with miscanthus grass and surrounded by the silver foliage of lamb’s ears and flanked by the bright yellow flowers of Jerusalem sage (Phlomis russeliana).

At the end of the day, both mother and daughter have succeeded in building two gardens of outstanding beauty.

But the creative collaboration between the two women is an achievement, too, and an example of how knowledge, wisdom and good taste can be passed from one generation to another when there is respect, flexibility and kindness ... as well as a shared love for transcendent beauty in the form of a garden.

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